"RAGE" IN EUROPE
claimed that the Aryan language and the Aryan civilization came
into Europe with the Alpines (Eurasiatics), who are of medium build3
rather dark, and broad-headed. The decipherment of the language
of the very "Jewish "-looking Hittites—which was certainly Aryan—
and the discovery of certain Aryan languages in North-West India
throws a new complexion on the whole question of the origin of the
Aryan languages.
Both the German and the French views cannot be entirely true,
but both may be partially or entirely erroneous. In so far as the
cultural origins of our civilization can be associated with any par-
ticular physical type, it must be linked neither with the Nordic nor
the Eurasiatic, but rather with the Mediterranean. As regards the
general physical measurements of the existing population of central
Europe, the prevailing physical type is Eurasiatic rather than either
Nordic or Mediterranean.
f
The Jews
A consideration of this "Aryan fallacy" leads us to two so-called
"race problems" which are of immediate political importance—the
Nordic and the Jewish. Beginning with the latter, we find that the
Jewish problem is far less a "racial" than a cultural one. Jews are
no more a distinct sharply marked "race" than are German or
English. The Jews of the Bible were of mixed descent. During their
dispersal they have interbred with the surrounding populations, so
that a number of hereditary elements derived from the immigrant
Jews are scattered through the general population, and the Jewish
communities have come to resemble the local population in many
particulars. In this way Jews of Africa, of Eastern Europe, of Spain
and Portugal, and so on, have become markedly different from each
other in physical type. What they have preserved and transmitted
is not "racial qualities" but religious and social traditions. Jews do
not constitute a race, but a society with a strong religious basis and
peculiar historic traditions, parts of which society have been forced
by segregation and external pressure into forming a pseudo-national
group. Biologically it is almost as illegitimate to speak of a "Jewish
race" as of an "Aryan race."
The Nordic Theory
The Nordic theory, which is a development of the " Aryan fallacy,"
is in another category. Instead of ascribing racial qualities to a group
Which is to-day held together on a cultural basis, it takes a hypo-
261